Word: lhc
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Sometime on Nov. 3, the supercooled magnets in sector 81 of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), outside Geneva, began to dangerously overheat. Scientists rushed to diagnose the problem, since the particle accelerator has to maintain a temperature colder than deep space in order to work. The culprit? "A bit of baguette," says Mike Lamont of the control center of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which built and maintains the LHC. Apparently, a passing bird may have dropped the chunk of bread on an electrical substation above the accelerator, causing a power cut. The baguette was removed, power...
...LHC, a 17-mile underground ring designed to smash atoms together at high energies, was created in part to find proof of a hypothetical subatomic particle called the Higgs boson. According to current theory, the Higgs is responsible for imparting mass to all things in the universe. But ever since the British physicist Peter Higgs first postulated the existence of the particle in 1964, attempts to capture the particle have failed, and often for unexpected, seemingly inexplicable reasons...
...magnets are now in the midst of the long cooling process back towards absolute zero temperatures, and the LHC is slated to be turned on again late this year or in early...
Unfortunately for Huth, the mysteries of nature have had to be put on hold while the LHC is repaired...
...Nature is infinitely resourceful,” wrote James D. Wells, a member of the CERN theory group, in a recent e-mail from England, “and will keep us very busy no matter what surprises the LHC reveals...